By Glen
In the course of writing Toxic History, I read, watched, listened to and cataloged hundreds of articles, videos and interviews with The Airborne Toxic Event. Thanks to my intrepid research assistant/editor Julie, who diligently collected and filed every scrap of Airborne-related coverage from the earliest days of their career, I feel quite confident in saying that there is very little published TATE content that I did not review as I prepared the book.
That is not to say, however, that all my questions have been answered. On the contrary, there remain a number of Airborne Toxic Unsolved Mysteries that remain unresolved. Here are five cold cases that, short of an Act of Mikel, may never be cracked.
5. Such Hot Title Track
Early on in the recording of Such Hot Blood, Mikel mentioned in an interview that the title track of the record was a song he had written 5-6 years earlier. And yet, by the time the album was released, it didn’t include a song called “Such Hot Blood.”
“It got cut,” he later clarified. “It just wasn’t happening. It felt six years old to me. It just didn’t quite fit in.”
“We had a good time recording it,” added Steven Chen. “I think as a piece for the album, for all the other songs on the record, they maybe felt more cohesive.”
That explanation makes sense. “Such Hot Blood,” the song, was written about Catherine, the girl featured in earlier tunes like “Happiness is Overrated” and “Missy.” The Mikel of 2012 was ready to move on to other topics.
What remains a little surprising is that the song didn’t even warrant inclusion as a B-side. When Such Hot Blood was finally released in Europe, it had grown by two songs, “Dublin” and “The Way Home” having been added to the original 10-song collection. The band’s decision not to tack on the intended title track at that point makes it seemingly unlikely that it will ever surface in any other context.
4. Timeless Works of Art
When The Airborne Toxic Event released the extravagant music video for “Timeless,” Mikel noted that the piece incorporated imagery from a number of notable artists.
“The idea was to metaphorically portray these two existing ideas that the song is about [birth and death] and to make the whole thing feel like a painting that’s been brought to life,” he said. “There are four, essentially, paintings that are all alive at the same time. That’s the notion.
“It’s inspired from a lot of different sources. There’s a very specific modern photographer that we were referencing. There’s the idea of nostalgia and decay; lost innocence. There’s an element of Japanese folklore; two different storylines from that.”
Identifying the source artwork has proven easier said than done. The ballerinas that appear throughout the video are drawn from Edgar Degas’ work, while the men in their overcoats and bowler hats owe themselves to Rene Magritte’s famous “Son of Man” painting.
Beyond this, positive identifications have been elusive. Of all the mysteries discussed here, this one seems most easily solvable. If you’ve discerned any of the other sources, please comment below!
3. Extended Secret
In September 2012, The Airborne Toxic Event debuted a new song called “The Secret” – first at a small benefit show at The Troubador, and then more publicly at Red Rocks: four and a half minutes of tumbling thoughts as the narrator drives through town, struggling to let go of a relationship that’s crashed and burned. Here’s how it sounded at the time (video by Mike Wilmoth):
In the run up to the release of Such Hot Blood, the band regularly performed “The Secret,” and it was always this same version. Meanwhile, I was listening to the Red Rocks performance on YouTube on a daily basis, having long since committed it to memory.
Fast forward to February 2013. The band had announced a delay in the release of the album, but planned to placate anxious fans by releasing The Secret EP in March, with four songs from the album, including, of course, “The Secret.” Around that time, we got our first listen to the studio version of the track when KCRW added it to their rotation.
Those of us who were familiar with the live rendition were a bit jarred by the truncated version they aired. Four and a half minutes had been trimmed to under three and a half, with a number of lyrical jewels cast aside in the process. A song that had once meandered its way toward the “Out now!” payoff now seemed to arrive there too suddenly, with transitions that seemed a tad abrupt.
It’s not that it was bad, of course; for me, it just wasn’t what I was expecting, and so I was left wanting more. I’m sure other fans who’d never heard the longer live version and came to it with fresh ears wouldn’t have been struck the same way. Served me right for spoiling things with bootlegs.
When I heard the track on KCRW’s website, it struck me immediately as a radio edit, which is not uncommon. It made sense: I figured “The Secret” would be the second single from the album, following “Timeless,” and four and a half minutes is a bit long for radio. Surely the album would contain the full version.
A couple weeks prior to the release of the EP, my theory was vindicated – or so it seemed. The band debuted each song from the EP online, through various websites. I got word that “The Secret” had been posted just as I was headed out the door for my 45-minute commute to work. I quickly clicked the link, and was thrilled to note that the track length clocked in at the expected four and a half minutes. I gave it one listen, ecstatic to finally hear the full song that I had come to know and love with studio quality sound. So you drink to forget, or you drink to remember… it was all there.
Just under an hour later, I settled into my office and decided to give it one more listen before getting to the tasks at hand. I called up the website again… and discovered that in the time it had taken me to drive to work, the file had changed. The full version had been replaced by the radio edit.
After my initial confusion passed, I figured, okay – they just want to save the full version for the EP release, and someone posted the wrong audio file by mistake. No big deal. Now that I had actually heard a studio recording of the full-length track, I had zero doubt that this would be the album version.
Until it wasn’t. As we all know, when the EP (and, later, the album) finally came out, it was with the short version of “The Secret” – the only version that many fans have ever heard.
Eventually, Mikel would reveal that it was the record label that convinced him to cut the song down – a decision he regretted allowing himself to be talked into.
It’s surprising that the longer version was ever given to the website that was handpicked to debut the song. Perhaps this indicates that the switch was a very late decision. Regardless, for a few brief, shining minutes, “The Secret” as it was always meant to be was out in the universe. We can only hope that, one day, it will again see the light of day.
2. The Kids Are Ready to Die (Punk)
I once wrote an entire article on the mystery of the various versions of “The Kids Are Ready to Die,” and now that I’ve reached the end of the research road, I’m still left scratching my head.
If you want the full story, click on the link above. For now, here’s the Cliff Notes version:
In April 2011, All At Once was released, with its stark, anguished, bare bones recording of “Kids.” The iTunes release included a bonus track dubbed, “The Kids Are Ready to Die [Alternative Version].” However, there is no discernible difference between the two recordings.
As the band began to work songs from their second record into the live show, they unveiled a vastly different punk rock version of the song. Asked why that version didn’t make the album, Mikel said they hadn’t settled on the punk arrangement until after the record had gone to press. As late as 2012, he claimed a studio recording of the punk version didn’t exist, though he tantalizingly hinted that it may be on the agenda in the near future (nothing ever came of this).
Meanwhile, there’s this video from March 2010 – a full year before All At Once hit shelves – featuring a very loud, very punk recording of a brand new song called “The Kids Are Ready to Die.”
This needn’t contradict Mikel. Just because they had a punk demo doesn’t mean they had landed on an arrangement they liked enough to release. But the question that’s always niggled at me is, what’s up with that iTunes-released Alternative Version? It makes no sense to release two tracks that sound the same in every respect, and call one of them “Alternative.” It really feels like that bonus track was meant to be the punk version, but something got lost in translation.
1. Lost Tracks
In the course of preparing the debut album, Mikel wrote upwards of 100 songs. For All At Once, the tally was over 50. Though a few of those tracks that didn’t make the cut eventually surfaced on Songs of God and Whiskey, there is a shit-ton of Airborne music that exists somewhere in Los Angeles, that will tragically be lost to history.
Every band has their rejects, of course, and most of them are rejected for good reason. But as SOGAW proved, there is bound to be at least a few gems in there somewhere, just in need of a bit of polishing.
For further evidence, I submit this video tour blog from 2007, while the first record was still under construction. Not only does the video begin with a snippet of the elusive “Echo Park” studio recording, but from the 0:57 mark on, it features a glorious unknown track as background music. (It drops out briefly around the 2:00 minute mark, but stick with it; it makes a ferocious return, and the volume gets turned up during the closing credits.)
Apart from a few song titles (“Things Such as These,” “Safety in Numbers,” “This is Not the Point of Babette”), precious little is known about the vast collection of demos that Mikel has squirreled away somewhere. What I wouldn’t give for a future archival project that resurrects some of this history.
Glen is the founder and editor of This Is Nowhere. He’s grateful for an understanding wife and kids who indulge his silly compulsion to chase a band all over the Pacific Northwest (and occasionally beyond) every time the opportunity arises.
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